


the dead kids

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Not really though, hello darkness (1am posting) my old friend....., this is just. plain old angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 10:09:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11712222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: they die. they come back to life. it's become routine.





	the dead kids

Jason comes back first. 

 

Or at least that’s what Bruce thinks; later he’ll learn that Jason wasn’t the first, after all, and he’ll regret it. 

 

But he thinks Jason comes back first, and this is important. 

 

Jason Todd, Red Hood. 

 

Bruce, of course, tries to get him to come back, to be his son again, and he fails. Jason will always be his son, Bruce knows. But he doesn’t know if he’s the father Jason wants.

 

So Bruce is left to mourn, mourn missed opportunities and mourn his son, all grown up and wanting nothing to do with him. 

 

Tim and Dick avoid him, and Alfred tries to console him. 

 

\----

 

Jason and Bruce are in the cave in a frosty silence, and Jason’s mask is off. 

 

Bruce tries not to be cowlless in the cave, but Jason’s hood  _ and  _ mask are off, so maybe Bruce should take his off, too. 

 

He does, to try and even the playing field. Make things more equal. 

 

He hears a door open, and he doesn’t move from examining the samples. The only reason Jason’s still here is because Bruce hasn’t retrieved the crutches for him yet.  

 

The lights turn off, and Jason yells out in protest, and when he turns his head to glare towards the doors, his eyes flash green. 

  
Bruce startles. 

 

“Jason,” he says. “Look at me.”

 

“Why?” Jason says, turning to level him with a glare. His irises are green--which they’d always been a greenish color, but now they’re  _ really  _ green, and they’re glowing. 

 

“You--your eyes are glowing,” Bruce says. Jason lifts his hand to touch his face. 

 

“Oh,” he says, then the lights turn back on and Jason turns away. 

 

“Sorry!” Tim calls down from above. “I thought it was empty down here!”

 

“Can you get the crutches,” Jason mumbles, and Bruce nods and goes to get them. 

 

\----

 

Jason seems fine, more or less. 

 

He’s stopped the killing--or he’s trying too--and he’s stopped the hiding, and he tries to stay with Bruce more often. 

 

One day they’re at dinner, all four of them--Bruce and Dick and Jason and Tim--and Dick asks Jason to pass the salt, and he doesn’t. 

 

“Jason?” Dick repeats. 

 

Jason doesn’t respond, but he’s there, and he’s staring at his plate. His eyes are open. Tim waves his hand in front of Jason’s face. 

 

He doesn’t respond. 

 

“Jason!” Bruce says, and Tim flicks his shoulder. 

 

Jason comes to, but slowly, as if from a trance.

 

“Sorry,” he says, and he looks up at Bruce, and his eyes flash green.

 

\----

 

Steph is the second to come back. 

 

She seems normal, seems happy, but her smile seems fake and her eyes are dull. 

 

One day she comes by to pick up Tim, and Bruce opens the door, and her eyes seem to slide right past him, then she makes eye contact, and it’s startling. 

 

Eye contact with Stephanie Brown has never been startling. 

 

“I’m here for Tim,” she says, and her voice seems--unnerving, as does everything about her, although Bruce can’t quite put his finger on it. 

 

“I’ll get him,” he says, and he backs away. Tim’s just in the other room, and a few minutes after they leave, Bruce thinks that it was like--like Steph wasn’t  _ present.  _

 

She was definitely there, but she used to have a presence, a gravity to her, and it seems--well, it seems like that’s  _ gone.  _

 

\----

 

Bruce hugs Jason, tentatively, on the anniversary of the day Jason came back to life, and he’s cold. 

 

Not in a chilly way, but--Jason doesn’t feel like he’s alive. No body heat at all. 

 

\----

 

“Just  _ kill  _ them,” Steph says, viciously, and Bruce turns to look at her in surprise. He’d nearly forgotten she was in the room. She was so quiet lately. 

 

“We don’t kill, Spoiler,” Bruce says blandly, and Steph blinks. 

 

“Right,” she says. “Sorry.” She sinks back into her chair. 

 

_ Odd.  _

 

\---

 

“The nearest explanation I can come up with is that they’re fading away,” Zatanna says. She looks worried. Jason and Steph are on the other side of the glass walls, where they can’t hear. Both of his kids are sitting on plastic chairs two feet from each other, not talking. Bruce can tell it’s not an angry silence, just a lost one. 

 

“Fading?” he repeats. Zatanna nods.

 

“People aren’t supposed to come back to life, Bruce,” she says. “Clark pulled it off because he’s an overpowered bastard, but Jason? Stephanie? They’re just mortals. Their life force--it’s not connecting right. They’re losing their grasp.”

 

“And what happens if they let go?” Bruce whispers, staring at Jason’s eyes glowing across the dim lighting. 

 

“I--Bruce. It’s their  _ lives  _ they’re trying to hold on to.”

 

\----

 

Bruce is sitting in his room, staring at the walls. 

 

His children--his  _ kids-- _ are going to fade away and die. 

 

This is all his fault. 

 

His fault for letting them die in the first place.

 

Jason was risen first. He has less time with Jason. Jason--he’s going to be taken from Bruce  _ again.  _

 

Bruce screams and shoves his pillows to the ground, which doesn’t feel like a satisfying enough break. 

 

He storms out of his room and down to the cave and Jason is still down there. 

 

“What’d Zatanna say?” Jason says, and he bites his lip. He looks worried.

 

Bruce steps forward and hugs him, his anger fading. He has to make the best of this time. He has to make sure he doesn’t regret anything, this time.

 

He has to find a way to stop it from happening at all. 

  
  


Jason’s arms go around him, hesitant, and oh how Bruce wishes his son was warm. 

 

\----

 

Bruce finds Cass crying on a rooftop. 

 

He hasn’t seen his daughter in a while but he’d let her be--actually, it’s been since before Jason came back. 

 

“Cassie?” he asks, and she turns. Her face is pale and her tears look….greenish.

 

Oh no. 

 

She blinks and there’s a flash of green from her eyes. 

 

_ Oh no.  _

 

She rubs her eyes which jostles her hair and there’s a white streak, like Jason’s. 

 

_ No.  _

 

“I--I can’t remember,” she sobs. “I don’t remember.”

 

“Remember what?” Bruce asks, his heart twisting. He kneels next to her. 

 

“Why,” she says. “Why--where. I--I can’t  _ remember.”  _

 

Bruce brushes a tear off her face. She feels like marble. 

 

He pulls her into his arms. 

 

_ When did she die? _

 

\----

 

Bruce has been staring at a computer screen for days, maybe. 

 

Hours, definitely. 

 

He’s not sure, and the numbers are all starting to blur together. The screen is giving him a headache, but he has to press on. 

 

He has to find a cure.

 

A hand touches his shoulder and he turns, startled. Steph stands there, her hair long and dull and messy from her cowl. 

 

She blinks. 

 

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to do,” she says. “But--I know something’s wrong. With me. With us. And--thanks.”

 

Bruce tries to smile.

 

“It’ll be no problem,” he says, and she leans over to hug him. He hugs her back, and tears prick at his eyes. 

 

He  _ has  _ to save them. 

 

\----

 

Damian dies, and Bruce holds him close. 

 

“More time, more time, more time,” he thinks, he chants. More time. 

 

He needs to bring Damian back. 

 

Maybe something to do with his dead cells versus his alive cells--maybe that’s the key. 

 

Maybe this will be the cure. 

 

Maybe his kids will grow up, after all. 

 

\----

 

Damian has white in his hair and his eyes glow and when he comes back Jason doesn’t remember him. 

 

A few days later, Jason calls to leave a dazed apology, but the damage is done, and Bruce overhears Damian and Steph in a closet.

 

“Is that gonna happen to  _ me?  _ Will I not remember--remember you? Father?  _ Grayson?”  _ He sounds close to tears. 

 

“I don’t know,” Steph says. Her voice sounds--off. 

 

“What does it feel like?” Damian whispers. Bruce doesn’t want to eavesdrop, but--.

 

“It feels like I’m slipping away. Like disassociating, but I feel like I’m less than before. I don’t know. I’m scared. It’s scary.”

 

“Father will--Father will cure us, right?” Damian asks, and he sounds like--like a  _ kid.  _

 

“I hope so,” Steph says, after a long, long time. “I hope so.”

 

\----

 

As near as Bruce can figure, Cass came back  _ before  _ Jason. 

 

She’s reckless and violent at times, withdrawing into herself at others and trailing off only to never finish her sentence. 

 

She bleeds bright green and her eyes are too bright yet too dull. 

 

Bruce worries for her. 

 

He’s not sure when she’s supposed to fade away.

 

\----

 

“I’m gonna sound like an asshole for this,” Bruce hears Dick say. Bruce had been napping, but he woke up to the sound of Dick and Tim talking. 

 

Dick pauses before he continues, nervously, “But they...unnerve me. It’s creepy.”

 

“I know what you mean,” Tim says. “It’s kinda like they suck the life out of the room.”

 

“It’s just a side effect, right?” Dick says. 

 

“Of what?” Duke asks, along with the sound of approaching footsteps. Bruce would guess that he’d just walked in. The pause that follows allows Bruce to believe that they’re exchanging a glance. 

 

“Death,” Dick says finally. 

 

“W-what?” Duke stammers. 

 

“Cass used to be really sweet,” Dick says. “An angel, really.”

 

“Steph used to be the brightest thing in the room,” Tim says, sounding wistful. 

 

“Jason--he used to be ready to learn and eager to please,” Dick adds. 

 

“Damian used to--not be so sad,” Tim says. “He was working on growing and being a better person, but death changed them. All of them.”

 

“Wait...what do you mean?” Duke asks, suspiciously. “Who died?”

 

At this, Bruce stands up from his spot on the couch. 

 

“They did,” he says, facing his boys. Dick looks sad and Tim looks resigned, while Duke’s eyes are wide with shock. 

 

_ Any day now,  _ Bruce’s mind whispers,  _ these’ll be your only kids left.  _

 

Bruce sweeps out of the room. His heart thuds in his chest and it feels like a countdown. 

 

\----

 

“You seem like you’re mourning,” Clark says one day, during a meeting. 

 

Bruce averts his eyes. 

 

\----

 

Babs calls him. 

 

It’s mid-afternoon. 

 

The sun is shining for once, and Bruce had felt--hopeful. 

  
  


He answers the phone with his stomach in his mouth. 

 

“Yes?”

 

“Bruce--” Babs says. She’s been crying. “It’s--it’s Cass.”

 

\----

  
  


Cass’s funeral is dark and gloomy. It’s not hard to be, in Gotham. 

 

Bruce feels dull inside and everything seems hopeless. 

 

Jason isn’t here.

 

Bruce thinks he may have--forgotten. 

 

He’d sent Roy to go find him, because he can’t leave his daughter’s side. 

 

Her coffin is a polished black, and there’s yellow flowers on top. 

 

Rain splashes against the coffin. 

 

\-----

 

“Steph, Steph, Steph,” Tim says, and he’s crying. Bruce can hear it from behind him. He turns, to make sure that the inevitable hasn’t happened--but no. 

 

Her eyes are open, and she seems like she’s not there at all. When did she get so pale?

 

Tim is shaking her, and she’s not responding. 

 

“Stephanie?” Damian asks, coming into the cave, and he runs to her side. “What’s the matter with her?”

 

“I don’t know,” Tim says. “She’s been like this for fifteen minutes.”

 

Damian grabs her hand and shakes her around. 

 

“Stephanie, Stephanie,” he says, and he sounds like he’s pleading. “Wake  _ up. _ ”

 

\----

 

“Batman, we  _ need  _ you for this,” Diana says. “You need to be up there with us.”

 

“I can’t,” Bruce says flatly. “I need to be with my kids.”

 

“Bruce….” Zatanna says, and she reaches out to touch his shoulder. “I’m sorry about Cass.”

 

“So am I,” Bruce growls, and he shakes her hand off and stalks away. 

 

\----

 

Bruce has tried  _ everything.  _ A demon deal, dark magic, science. 

 

Death, it seems, is unbeatable. 

 

Bruce can’t lose another one.

 

\----

 

“Batsy?” a voice says, tentative. Bruce turns. Harley Quinn, off all people, is standing right behind him. She must’ve been taking lessons from Selina on sneaking. 

 

“What is it, Quinn?” Bruce growls. He’s  _ so  _ tired. 

 

“Uh,” she says. “There’s no easy way ta say this. Um. Maybe you should come with me.”

 

Bruce follows, against his better judgement. He knows he can take her down. She seems to nervous to be setting up a trap. 

 

She turns to him, just outside a warehouse.

 

“He came to me, first,” she says. “Gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He didn’t seem quite right in th’ head, but who does?”

 

Bruce goes past her and into the warehouse. 

 

He doesn’t know what he’ll see, but he’s not expecting this. 

 

There’s blood, everywhere. 

 

Dark, dark red. 

 

In the middle, beaten and bruised, is the Joker. 

 

He’s very, very dead. 

 

Off to the side, away from the Joker---Jason. 

 

He has a crowbar. 

 

He’s on the ground. 

 

Bruce goes to him. 

 

He kneels and presses his finger to his son’s neck. 

  
  


There’s no heartbeat.

 

\----

  
  


Jason gets a new headstone. 

  
  


_ Beloved son. _

_ Beloved friend. _

_ Beloved Brother. _

 

His new grave is next to Cass’s.

  
  


\----

 

Damian is curled up on Bruce’s chest, dwarfed by the borrowed hoodie of Dick’s. 

 

Stephanie is on Bruce’s side, laying on the bed next to them, curled up under Bruce’s arm. She, too, has always been small, but she’s getting gaunt and thin and Bruce is afraid for both of them. 

 

Damian will never grow to be big, bigger than Stephanie. 

 

He’ll never be able to lord it over her while she pretends to be upset about it. 

 

Bruce’s arms tighten around his kids. 

 

“Fath--Dad,” Damian says, his voice small. “When I die, I want Grayson to have Titus.”

 

“No, Damian, don’t say that,” Bruce says, his voice cracking. Damian shakes his head.

 

“No,” he says. “I have to. I want Richard to have Titus, and Drake to keep Alfred, and Pennyworth to keep Batcow. Goliath can be shared between Jon, Maya, and Maps.”

 

“Damian--” Bruce says. 

 

“Will you make sure it happens?” Damian asks, shifting to meet Bruce’s eyes, Lazarus green boring into blue. “Will you?”

 

“Yes,” Bruce whispers, his heart breaking. 

 

“And I want--I want Mother to have my sword, and I want you to have my sketchbook,” Damian says. 

 

“Okay,” Bruce says, tears welling up. “Okay.”

 

Steph curls up closer. 

 

“I don’t have anything to give anyone,” she says, her voice dull. “I don’t--”

 

She starts hyperventilating and Bruce’s arm tightens around her. 

 

“M-make sure,” she says though her tears. “Make sure they remember me.”  

 

She sounds so desperate, so  _ afraid-- _

 

“Of course,” Bruce says. “Of course.”

 

\----

 

Steph squeezes Bruce’s hand.

 

“I think it’s time,” she says, faintly. 

 

“No,” Bruce says. Firm.

 

Her smile is sad.

 

\----

 

She dies on a warm spring day, out all alone, in the backyard of Wayne Manor surrounded by flowers. 

 

When Bruce finds her, she has a faint smile on her face. 

 

\----

 

Since Crystal is buried next to Steph’s old grave, Bruce feels moderately less selfish burying her next to his own mother. 

 

\----

 

“I can’t keep my own kids from coming to harm,” Bruce says. It’s three am and sometimes it’s hard to keep his feelings in. 

 

“Bruce…” Clark says. 

 

“I just--I don’t know what to  _ do,”  _ Bruce says, burying his head in his hands. “My kids are all dying on me. I’m gonna lose ‘em.”

 

“I don’t know how to help you,” Clark says. “But you’re the bravest man I know. You’ll get through it.”

 

“What parent has to bury their child?” Bruce says. “ _ Twice?”  _

 

Clark’s hand pats Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce relishes in the warmth. 

 

“Treasure the time you have with them while it’s there,” Clark whispers. “I’m going to outlive everyone I know. I already know that I have to remember and value everything I do with them, just in case it’s the last time.”

 

“I don’t  _ want  _ it to be the last time,” Bruce mumbles. 

 

\----

 

“Did I feed Titus,” Damian asks, bursting into Bruce’s study. It’s more lively then Bruce has seen Damian in weeks. “I don’t think I fed Titus.”

 

“It’s okay,” Bruce soothes. “When’s the last time you for sure fed him?”

 

“A...month ago?” Damian says, looking stricken. “Oh no, he’s gonna die.”

 

“Damian, calm down,” Bruce says, and he stands up. “Let’s go check on his food. I’m sure Alfred’s been feeding him.” 

 

They walk together, and Titus’s food bowl is overflowing. 

 

“Who fed him?” Damian demands. 

 

“You did, Master Damian,” Alfred says, raising an eyebrow. “More than once today.”

 

“Oh,” Damian says, sagging against Bruce. “I can’t--I can’t remember things like I used to.”

 

“I know,” Bruce says, lifting Damian up. “You’ll be okay.”

 

“No I won’t,” Damian mumbles, and Bruce ignores the jolt in his heart when he hears that.

 

\----

 

Dick walks in. 

 

“I put Damian to sleep,” he says, and he sounds beyond tired. He sits down across from Bruce. 

 

“Are you ever--afraid--that he’ll die in his sleep?” Bruce asks, staring at the fireplace. 

 

“Of course,” Dick says. “I’m afraid  _ I’ll  _ die in my sleep. But, you know--maybe it’s for the best. It helps you to--value what you have.”

 

“That’s what Clark said,” Bruce says. 

 

“Clark is pretty smart,” Dick says. He chuckles. “Hey, if you die tonight, in your sleep, just know that I love you.”

 

“I love you too,” Bruce says. He keeps looking at the fire. “I’m sorry if I’ve been--neglecting you guys.”

 

“I understand,” Dick says. “And so do the others. None of us want him to die, either.”

 

“I know,” Bruce says. “I know.”

 

\----

 

The next morning, Damian’s dead.

 

\----

 

Bruce sits alone in an unused guest room. 

 

He thinks the stark, unlived in look is nice.

 

He has a sketchbook on his lap. 

 

He traces the outside, which has a  _ keep out  _ sticker neatly pressed on the top right corner. Bruce opens it. 

 

There’s a drawing of Stephanie, on the first page. She’s laughing and Damian had added bright yellow highlights to her hair. 

 

Bruce wonders if he used a reference from before Steph died the first time, because Bruce hadn’t seen her like that in a long, long time. 

 

The next picture is of Robin. 

 

Upon closer inspection, it’s Jason. Bruce recognizes the chubby cheeks and curly hair and dimples. 

 

He traces the drawing. 

 

The next few pictures are all Bat-cow, then some still lifes, then there’s one of Tim, and Duke, then Cass. 

 

The picture is dark with ink except for bright green in her eyes. She looks dangerous and beautiful. 

 

Damian was only thirteen. 

 

He was only thirteen and Steph wasn’t even twenty: Cass and Jason were barely that.

 

Bruce bends his head over the sketchbook, and he’s careful not to let tears stain any of the pictures, although he does let the tears fall. 

 

They were so  _ young.  _

 

\----

 

“M-me?” Duke asks, surprised. “W-why me?” 

 

“She wanted to be remembered,” Bruce says. “I think you’d be suited for it.”

 

Duke looks down at the purple cape in his hands.

 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

 

Bruce casts a look at the case, on the wall--the red and yellow and green. 

 

_ Did I do good?  _ he asks it. 

 

The case doesn’t answer. None of the three Robin ones do, nor the black Batgirl standing tall and proud next to them. 

 

Bruce didn’t expect them to. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> comments/kudos welcome!!!!


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